Where Is The Root Of Our American Evil? You Might As Well Ask, "Where's Waldo?"

The problem is far deeper than Congress vs the White House, Democrats vs Republicans, Left vs Right, or Liberal vs Conservative. Those are all labels invented to keep people at each others' throats and away from the people who actually run the world. If you're too absorbed in the fist fight going on in front of you, you'll be too distracted to notice the grand theft going on behind you. Until you get the pettiness out of politics - good luck with that - and get people to stop watching 'Hillbilly Sister Breeding' on TV, you'll never get them to stand united and up to the massive wealth being made by the Central banks, on securities so byzantine as to make derivatives look like crayon drawings, and to the fact that we've all been duped for...centuries.

The scheme is so broad, so well-meshed, and so pervasive that it looks real. And when the few people who pull up the edges and peer under it scream out what they've found, they're merely labeled nuts and it's right back to 'Cajun Wife Beating'.

You can't fix stupid.

So whom do you talk to? Contacting the media is like sending an email to the Vatican about pedophile priests: They already know because they're involved.

I applaud activism and I support activists' efforts, but the mainstream media isn't your friend in this matter, even the NYT.

More in tune with what it takes to turn the worm is someone like Matt Taibbi. You should read his work on RollingStone.com. His father is Mike Taibbi of NBC News, so journalism is in Matt's blood, but his politics run heavily independent, and that's the only place you'll find any sort of truth; neither of the 2 major parties has any desire to bite the hand that feeds them.

Keep up with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, too. Bernie is hell on wheels and he's a Democratic Socialist like me. You can always tell the knee-jerk crowd who react to "socialist" without further research. It amuses me greatly.

Change will come only when people realize that the only secure means of communicating is mouth-to-mouth and then only with those whom you know. The internet is like a giant bulletin board, regardless how secure the 'leets think they're being. I could tell you how I know...but then I'd have to kill you.

From Wikipedia under 'Oligarchy': "Political theory - Further information: Iron law of oligarchy
"Robert Michels believed that any political system eventually evolves into an oligarchy. He called this the iron law of oligarchy. According to this school of thought, many modern democracies should be considered as oligarchies. In these systems, actual differences between viable political rivals are small, the oligarchic elite impose strict limits on what constitutes an acceptable and respectable political position, and politicians' careers depend heavily on unelected economic and media elites. Thus the popular phrase: there is only one political party, the incumbent party." (my italics)

Want to be different without falling off the hipster cliff? Be an independent or, hell, become a Democratic Socialist. Want to be a lemming? Do nothing. 

"Believe you can or believe you can't; either way, you're right" - Henry Ford

Journalistic Integrity Weekly Cable News Magazine

Every day, I read the news, watch the news, listen to the news, and I try to get news from a variety of sources so that I get a good cross sample of what's going on. I read the traditional sources, the newcomers; the liberal, the conservative; the sane, the not-so-much; the rational, and the irrational. I've always felt, about a great many things, that the truth isn't sequestered on the extreme, but exists somewhere in the logical center. 

Increasingly, I find the logical center harder to find. Or more correctly said, harder to define. The lines get blurred and the small, hard center of truth which once existed has now become a large, fuzzy bullseye with annular rings of varying truth-saturation. One journalist might sound sane until you get right to the end of the article, then he blows it with an off-the-deep-end assessment or prognostication. Some are just bat-shit crazy, and for the instant recognition of that their writing brings, we thank them. 

It's those who are 95% right, and 5% crazy old cat lady unbalanced that concern me most. Because they SOUND like they're making sense; I mean, the first 1950 words of their columns will be dead-on accurate, but suddenly Pee Wee Herman channeling L. Ron Hubbard takes over and the reason we have 10% unemployment is that aliens are informing the current administration's economic policy. 

Um...whiskey tango foxtrot, over?

The truth is always being means-tested by various organizations. Manufacturers claims get tested by organizations like Consumers Union and Underwriters Laboratories. Food producers face the truth test via the USDA; drug makers by the FDA. Boeing and Airbus must run their truths through the Danger Zone at the behest of the FAA, and for politics we have PolitiFact and FactCheck. Snopes.com puts urban myths' feet to the fire and all of the above deserve our thanks when they do their jobs right.

But where's the Gong Show for journalism? Yes, there's the Peabody awards and the Pulitzer, but those look to find the apex of reporting and writing, not the bottom dwellers. We need a cable show along the lines of Hillbilly Hand Fishing that sticks its varied and sundry appendages into the dark, muddy recesses of reporting, pulls out the 250-pound shitsucker, and throws him on the bank for the blistering light of public scrutiny to wither to jerky. 

There needs to be a highly visible public panel or discussion group or such - I'm thinking McLoughlin Group as the paradigm - where the dirtbags who soil our bandwidth get called to Jesus for an On-Air behind-the-woodshed dressing down when they fuck up. A Tim Russert-sort, beaming from ear to ear, to put them in an electronic full-nelson and give them noogies until they 'fess up would be my go-to guy as moderator. Air it on Sundays along with the other political magazines and make it high profile. Drag the bastards through the same mud they ooze onto otherwise inoffensive media and castigate the liars publicly.

Hell, it might even draw ratings, who knows?


Update: In a moment of rare mental clarity, I had an epiphany. Matt Taibbi for moderator. If anybody can spot a canard in the coal mine of journalism, it's him.